Control Blade Wolf In Another Forgettable Revengeance Add-On

Game Informer reviews editor Joe Juba wasn't exactly in love with Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance, but he had much harsher words to say about its first DLC (Jetstream). It featured rehashed areas and enemies, no upgradable abilities or new weapons, and clocked in at about 90 minutes long. After playing the new Blade Wolf DLC and reading Joe's piece on the previous offering, it's clear that the same complaints can be made here. The only difference being this one is even shorter.

In the 51 minutes it took me to beat the new story mode (if you can even call it that), I had a chance to explore several recycled environments and take out enemies with Blade Wolf's assorted attacks. In standard combat, he features some vertical claw slashes and a horizontal tail swipe. Combos allow him to perform some brutal mid-air spinning attacks that do a number on most enemies. Collecting heat blades allows you to attack from a distance, which is useful on a few flying enemies that pop up in the DLC. While Blade Wolf is competent in head-to-head combat, you'll want to lean on his deadly stealth attacks whenever possible.

Blade Wolf certainly feels different than Raiden, which is a nice change of pace. Unfortunately, no upgrade options whatsoever exist for the character. If you don't like Blade Wolf's fighting style, you're out of luck.

Your reward for battling through the Blade Wolf DLC is a new boss fight, but it doesn't offer anything particularly memorable. It's nice to see at least one new element in another rehashed DLC offering, but it by no means makes Blade Wolf worth a download. Hardcore Metal Gear Rising fans may want to spend the $7, but they're the only ones who will find anything worthwhile here.